If one were to pick a creature synonymous with showiness, they might choose a peacock or flamingo, or perhaps a chameleon or zebra — not the humble brook trout. Yet that was the animal hundreds of schoolkids and community members gathered to celebrate in Burlington last Friday with the pomp and pageantry usually reserved for a major sporting event.
As they gathered outside the Flynn theater and then marched down Church Street, students from the Sustainability Academy chanted “We shout for the trout!” and “We love the trout, but we must let them out!” Homemade puppets depicting an array of animals — from bugs to birds to bears — bobbed up and down. A band of merry musicians banged rhythmically on buckets.
Mayor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak marched alongside the kids. A pair of towering river goddess papier-mâché puppets transported from Glover by the famous Bread and Puppet Theater troupe led the students, and whimsically dressed performers on stilts brought up the rear.
The two-hour event was the culmination of the students’ study of brook trout, the cold-water state fish. (The warm-water state fish is walleye.) Their project kicked off in January when Tupperware containers filled with 100 eggs arrived from a state hatchery. Those eggs were carefully placed into a large fish tank in the school’s lobby. Fourth graders nurtured them and watched them hatch and grow from tiny, translucent creatures with yolk sacs attached to their bellies to independent swimmers called fry.
The hands-on learning experience started in 2021, when the school’s then-principal, Nina Oropeza, connected with national nonprofit Trout Unlimited, an organization dedicated to the conservation of cold-water habitats. Through the org’s Trout in the Classroom program, nearly 3,000 schools in 34 states raise fish and learn about life cycles, food chains and stream ecology.
The monthslong study is intended to get students excited about how ecosystems work, explained Trout Unlimited’s youth programs manager, Cecily Nordstrom.
Teachers at the Sustainability Academy, one of two magnet elementary schools in the Burlington School District, see Trout in the Classroom as the perfect complement to the school’s overarching goals.
“The mission of ‘education for sustainability’ … is really about, How do we function as an interdependent, diverse community in this place? How do we take care of one another?” said Kestrel Plump, the school’s education for sustainability academic coach. That work is done inside the classroom but also includes “our community … the plants, the animals … the earth we’re on.”
The trout parade was born in 2022, when Oropeza and Plump came up with the idea to have fourth graders carry the fish around the school in plastic tubs so students could say goodbye. For the first few years, students took a school bus that day to the Huntington River, where they released the silvery, spotted swimmers into their new home, adding to a thriving population of the fish in Vermont. Now, they release them a few days later.
Three years ago, Dave Paarlberg-Kvam, the school’s art teacher, suggested taking the event to the next level. Plump, who’d worked for several years with Philadelphia’s Spiral Q on its large-scale puppet events, was on board. Paarlberg-Kvam helped fourth graders make a giant adult trout puppet that required six people to maneuver. Before releasing the trout, they looped around the school’s recreation field while students and staff cheered.
The next school year, staff from the Flynn learned about the parade and asked to get involved. The performing arts center paid visiting local artists Erik Gillard — also known as Uncle Erok — and Janice Walrafen to help students create animal puppets and banners. The Flynn also hosted events for people to make puppets and signs for the parade and provided space for students to practice chants. Last year, the parade centered on the life cycle of the trout, with each grade representing the fish at a different developmental stage.
It was “a huge success,” Flynn education programs manager Kat Rousseau said, and drew an estimated crowd of around 600.
“It’s just such a beautiful celebration of our community and the hard work these kids have been putting in for the whole spring,” Rousseau said. “It’s a beautiful intersection of art and ecology.”
And it’s an event that creates the type of authentic student engagement that can be elusive in an increasingly virtual world that’s lacking in human connection, teachers say.
Light rain didn’t dampen the mood as the parade floated down Church Street, where workers and shoppers stopped to marvel at the scale and silliness of it all. Some looked befuddled, as if they were trying to remember a holiday they’d forgotten. Others clapped and cheered.
The procession wound its way through the streets of Burlington, then stopped at the Sustainability Academy to pick up more elementary students and younger kids from local childcare programs. The larger group headed down North Street to Battery Park, where more parents and community members were waiting.
“This is so absurd,” one of them said. “It’s so great.”
A short pageant highlighted other animals that the young trout might meet once released. One by one, and as a harpist played in the background, each grade traipsed across the grass: trees, bugs, black bears, river otters, herons and ospreys.
“Enjoy the songbirds who build their nests along the banks and wake the forest every morning with their song,” one student narrator said, as a flock of kids fluttered by wearing wings and masks fashioned to resemble chickadees, cardinals and bluebirds.
Two adult trout puppets made from tie-dyed swaths of fabric, with large painted heads in the style of dancing Chinese dragons, filed across the grassy field, each powered by the feet of half a dozen students. Afterward, kids lined up for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream as the crowd dispersed.
It was a fitting ending to an event that brought a hearty helping of sweetness to a cloudy Friday afternoon.
“At its core,” Plump said, the parade is “just a love letter to the trout.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Fish Out of Water | Burlington students spend months learning about trout, then celebrate with a parade downtown”
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